Rosen: Cases and Materials on The Outfit

David Rosen

Don Corleone to Sonny, in The Godfather

The Don sighed. "Well, then I can't talk to you about how you should behave. Don't you want to finish school, don't you want to be a lawyer? Lawyers can steal more money with a briefcase than a thousand men with guns and masks. "

Robert Warshow, in "The Gangster as Tragic Hero"

Thus, the importance of the gangster film, and the nature and intensity of its emotional and esthetic impact, cannot be measured in terms of the place of the gangster himself or the importance of the problem of crime in American life. Those European movie-goers who think there is a gangster on every comer in New York are certainly deceived, but defenders of the "positive" side of American culture are equally deceived if they think it relevant to point out that most Cases and Materials Americans have never seen a gangster. What matters is that the experience of the gangster as an experience of on art is universal to Americans. There is almost nothing we understand better or react to more readily or with The Outfit quicker intelligence.

This night, though, Pam had a different tale to tell. She announced that she and her friend Annie, the daughter of a prize-winning biologist, had gone to see "The Godfather," that they had been so deeply moved that, instead of going home, she'd gone tripping around town in search of the Mafia.

I remember one night Pam showed up at the House at "The Mafia!" three in the morning. Not that there was anything unusual in somebody showing up that late; the TV was Twisto Levine, Doctor of Crime, connoisseur of petty always on with competition from at least one stereo, theft, bars and New Haven lowlife, a man who savored there were shoulders to cry on, ears anxious for the his brief but illuminating contact with the Invisible 87 latest gossip, and always somebody was there who was Forces, laughed out loud. ready to share good dope with all comers. Pam turned: a serious look on her face reproved Twisto. Pam used to show up often at the House. She came mainly to relate her long tales of woe and amorous "Yes, the Mafia," she said, explaining that after seeing disappointment, though it was almost always the same "The Godfather" she realized that she could find, in the disappointment: daughter of a prominent English Mafia, that human closeness that had been lacking in her professor, a perennial student, she was bright enough, life ever since she'd been a child. but she seemed to specialize in getting into ruts that repeated themselves month after month and year after "But Pam," said Twisto, "where'd you go to find year. them?" Well, it turned out that Pam hadn't quite located

David Rosen is a third year student at Yale Law School. Published by Yale Law School Legal Scholarship Repository, 1973 1 Yale Review of Law and Social Action, Vol. 3 [1973], Iss. 1, Art. 7

the Mafia yet. And that it was only this failure that Answer: Joe Colombo, Sr.--No. tainted her otherwise successful evening. Not that she hadn't tried hard. To begin with, she and Annie had Answer: Joe Colombo, Jr.--No. gone to the Billy Budd room of the Holiday Inn where they spent the last of their money on Scotch. From Question: If there is a Mafra, is it growing? declining? there, they'd moved on to another hotel. The action there had begun on a promising note: a small group of Answer: Life magazine series, September, 1967: meaty, middle-aged men, Italian-looking and drunk, ... Each year it handles $20 billion in illegal bets, of which it crowded around the two girls. Pam found them plenty keeps $7 billion profit. ... On every bet made, be it $1 or vulgar enough to qualify as Mafiosi. It was just that as $10,000, the Mob collects a cut of the action, called vigorish --­ soon as she and Annie began to get somewhere, they usually 10%. were suddenly booted out of the hotel (by a couple of ... no one can say for sure just what its legitimate investments bouncer-pimps, who were apparently concerned with amount to .... The best hint came from gangland's own the effect that an invasion by the competition would financial wizard - Mayer Lansky himself - who made a modest have on their business). appraisal of the Mob's private holding. "We're bigger than U.S. Steel," said Lansky. From there (later we discovered that they'd crashed a convention of cash-register salesmen) Pam and Annie hit Even though U.S. Steel's assets are $5,642,379,942 and its the bar at the Midtown Motor Inn, ordered drinks, and 1966 profits came to $249,238,569, Lansky's boast strikes federal investigative agencies as conservative. The gangsters are began their Mafia watch in the semi-darkness. 'Tm sure in almost everything .... they were on their way," said Pam, "I'm sure. Otherwise why would the bartender have hustled us out? Got us The Mob's power over the nation's biggest port and its rackets - out so quick he never even asked us to pay for our shakedowns, shylocking and thievery -- stems from its grip on drinks." ILA locals. The Gambino gang today dominates the unions on the Brooklyn piers. On the docks of Manhattan and in New Jersey ports, the Vito Genovese gang is rigidly in "Going back there tomorrow night?" I asked, with a control. straight face. Answer: Nicholas Gage, in New York magazine, July 24, A blissful expression settled over Pam's face. She 1972: nodded, faintly, peacefully. The DeCalvacante tapes reveal, for the first time, the kind of seediness that makes up Mafia life. They show DeCalvacante, Twisto broke the long moment of silence that followed. whom the F .BJ. had labelled as the boss of New Jersey, running all over the state trying to find a $150 a-week job for "Where the fuck's the coke," he said. "I said where the a Gambino relative. They tell of Mafia underbosses giving their hell is the goddamn coke." He fumbled under the chair, wives $50 a week household money and paying $125 a month and found nothing. "You bring any coke Pam? You cop rent. Contrary to what most journalists write about the mob any coke from the Mafia?" and most police claim, the DeCalvacante papers proved the majority of the Mafia's membership are not millionaires, but are low-level, ulcer-ridden, working-class worriers - in She ignored him, and turned back to me, her eyes half construction gangs or scrounging for jobs in factories or along open, as if in a trance. the Jersey piers - who carry messages, administer occasional beatings or watch over failing businesses on which they are "What kind of opera records you keep around here?" continuously trying to borrow money. One has a hard time she asked. reconciling the Mafia life-style according to DeCalvacante with the declaration of Carl M. Loeb, president of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, who would have us believe Question: Is organized crime Italian? that "in ten or fifteen years organized crime will have amassed at least one half trillion dollars and will then own the entire Answer: Mario Puzo, in The Godfather Papers: United States." ... do Italians and American-Italians control organized crime in America? The answer must be a reluctant but firm Question: Where is the Mafia? 88 Yes .... Most of the operators in organized crime in this country will bleed Italian blood. That fact must be accepted. Answer: Yale men, 1970: The Copper Kitchen (Chapel Street, between College and High). Answer: Nicholas Gage, The Mafia in Not an Equal Opportunity Employer: Answer: Yale men, 1966: in Olivia's (Chapel Street, Clearly, the underworld in the United States is as much a between College and High). melting pot as any other aspect of our culture, and the opportunities for vice have attracted just as many ethnic groups as the opportunities for legitimate achievement .... if Answer: Magazine freaks, 1972: Consult New York every member of the Mafia disappeared tomorrow, organized magazine, issue of July 24, which features: "Mafia Maps: crime would still be an immense, if largely invisible, parasite Where to find Your Local Button Man": six pages in the· sucking the lifeblood of American society. center of the magazine which cover Manhattan, Question: Is there a Mafia? https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/yrlsa/vol3/iss1/7Answer: J. Edgar Hoover, 1961--No. 2 Rosen: Cases and Materials on The Outfit

Brooklyn and the Bronx, and which tell you where to "You see down there," Twisto whispered as the waiter find the Mafia's favorite social clubs and restaurants, left us. He pointed to the other end of the restaurant, dumping grounds, florists, mortuaries and historical where a side door led out to Mulberry Street. "That sites. door is where the guy that took Joey came in. Joey and three others were setting at these two tables there." He Answer: Pam:???? pointed out two of the small, shellacked butcher-block style tables near the door. "5:30 A.M., April 7, Joey's 43rd birthday. Man comes in, 5'8", black hair, wearing a light tweed car coat. Suddenly he's blazing away with his Question: Where is the Mafia? .38, and that's the end of Joey."

It is a new place, clean and well-lighted, on the comer of I looked down the two neat rows of tables that ran Mulberry and Hester. The sign outside the building is down the length of the restaurant. The window near the white, brightly lighted plastic that announces through table where Gallo was killed was like all the other the night: Scungilli, Calamari, Mussels. Umberto's Clam windows in the place: fish net in the window, holding House. Pepsi. round colored plastic baubles, and on the window-sill a model of a ship. Between us and Joey's death seat, Inside, a counter runs down the length of the restaurant; autographed pictures had been hung along the wall: Bob behind it, waiters and chefs scurry about in front of a Hope, Johnny Carson, a host of Italian nightclub singers wall of light green tile. Just above them, the wall turns that I didn't recognize, and a framed page out of New into white plaster: fastened to it is a ring buoy with York magazine in which Umberto's is highly recom­ letters labelling it "Umberto's" painted around its entire mended. circumference; on either side of the ring buoy, paddles are clamped onto the wall. This clean, well-lighted place was not a proper place for death. And yet, on that night twenty shots were fired We walked in at midnight; a waiter sat the three of us at from four guns into the walls and tables and the flesh of a table for four near the front door. Joey Gallo; tables were overturned, ketchup and hot sauce spilled all over the place as Gallo stumbled out the Twisto was finishing a story as we glanced over the front door to die in the middle of Hester Street (several menu. It was one of his good ones, one which may or months before, only a block away, Don Corle one had may not be true, but which I had heard so many times been shot by thugs under the direction of Francis that I thought I had witnessed it myself. It was about Copolla). Eugene Genovese, who, after a Black History lecture at Yale one day three years back; was asked whether or not "It gives me the creeps," said Pamela. "It's like being in he was related to Vito Genovese. some old palace, or Mount Vernon, or somethin' like that." Twisto had to hurry the punch-line; he spoke it in a whisper, as the waiter was hurrying back to our table to The waiter returned with scungilli and calamari. Five take orders. minutes later he came with my spaghetti and later again with coffee and Italian pastry, but I never managed to "So, Genovese turns on the kid, and he says, 'Do you ask him where he was and what he was doing at that think that if I was related to Vito Genovese I'd be moment in the dawn that earned Umberto's its place in teaching in this dump?" history.

I looked up at the waiter, who was dressed in a bright Thomas Wolfe, From "Only the Dead Know Brooklyn" red coat; I nodded meaninglessly at him. "Listen!" I says. 'You get dat idea,outa yoen head right now," I says. "You ain't neveh gonna get to know Brooklyn," I says. "Not in a hundred yeahs. I been living heah all my life," "Spaghetti with clam sauce," I said. I says, "an' I don't even know all deh is to know about it, so 89 how do you expect to know duh town," I says, "when you "Red or white sauce," he asked, with a heavy Italian don't even live heah?" accent. "Yes," he says, "but I got a map to help me find my way about." Ask him, I said to myself. Ask him now. "Map or no map," I says, "yuh ain't gonna get to know Brooklyn wit no map," I says. "Red," I said.

Twisto order the scungilli, and Pam asked for Calamari.

Published"'Red by Yale Lawor School white Legal sauce,' Scholarship Repository,he asked, 1973 with a heavy Italian accent." 3 Yale Review of Law and Social Action, Vol. 3 [1973], Iss. 1, Art. 7

"Little Caesar," fdmscript, scene 1. •·· though there are real gangsters-is also, and primarily, ... Rico picking up a discarded Chicago newspaper and a creature of the imagination. The real city, one might say, becoming interested in a story. He looks with disgust at a produces only criminals; the imaginary city produces the cheap ring which he twists on the little finger of his left hand, then turns to Joe. Thereupon a close view shows Rico showing gangster: he is what we want to be and what we are Joe the newspaper story, which reads: afraid we may become. UNDERWORLD PAYS RESPECTS TO DIAMOND PETE MONTANA. In the classic gangster film that Warshaw writes about, Joe glances swiftly at the story, and looks questioningly at Rico: which might be best represented by "Little Caesar," the JOE: Well, what's that gotta do with the price of eggs? meaning of the gangster's career is contained in the RICO: (snatching away paper). A lot. Big time (Musing) meaning of his drive to success. For in the city, says. "Diamond Pete Montana." He don't have to waste his time on Warshaw, success is at a premium: "One must emerge cheap gas station ....He don't have to waste his time on hick from the crowd or one is nothing." And yet, success cops ....He's in the Big Town, doin' things in a big way. JOE: Uerking his thumb at the newspaper). Is that what you within these terms must lead inevitably to the final want? A party like that for you, Rico? "Caesar Enrico bullet because "success is always the establishment of an Bandello Honored By His Friends?" individual pre-eminence that must be imposed on others Rico straightens up and draws a deep breath, and his jaw sets in whom it automatically arouses hatred." The others grimly as he stares into vacancy. He mutters as though talking shoot back; a new Mr. Big climbs to the top, at least to himself: RICO: I could do all the things that fellow does. More! When I temporarily. get in a tight spot, I shoot my way out of it. Like tonight ... sure, shoot fust-argue afterwards. If you don't the other feller For Warshaw, the meaning of the gangster's doom in the gets you ....This game ain't for guys that's soft! form-film goes beyond the form-wisdom that "Crime doesn't pay." The gangster is doomed not because his The classic analysis of the gangster's position in the means are unlawful, but rather because, in the modem American imagination is Robert Warshow's short essay, consciousness "all means are unlawful, every attempt to "The Gangster as Tragic Hero." Warshaw opens his essay succeed is an act of aggression, leaving one alone and by identifying Americanism, along with Communism, as guilty and defenseless among enemies: one is punished an equalitarian ideology which is committed to a for success. This is our intolerable dilemma: that failure cheerful view of life, as opposed to that tragic sense is a kind of death and success is evil and dangerous-is, which "is a luxury of aristocratic societies, where the ultimately, impossible." fate of the individual is not conceived of as having a direct and legitimate political importance ..."Though at Rico Bandello, Little Caesar, falls to the state of a the time Warshaw wrote (1948) mass culture was only flophouse denizen before getting shot by cops on a cold, entering into its cultural empire, he concevied of movies windy night on a deserted street of the city's industrial and television as the indispensable tools of a society bent section. This is the standard end for the gangster, the on maintaining public morale at the level of "happiness." lone contemptuous death that links him to the Macbeth side of tragic literature. But if we are to take the "Little But within the mass culture of happiness addiction, Caesar" pattern as the standard for the genre, it quickly there was room, perhaps even a need for a subversive becomes apparent that the most successful recent element, something that would lend expression to "that gangster film may be noted not so much for the way it part of the American psyche which rejects the qualities fits into that pattern, as for the ways in which it departs and the demands of modem life, which rejects 'Ameri­ from it. Don Corleone dies, not alone on the streets, but canism' itself." For Warshaw, it was the gangster-film in the family garden, playing with his grandson. As the which, alone among popular forms, accomplished this by novel makes explicit, the Don's function is. not to stand expressing the fears and secret yearnings that lurked in out in success, but to govern wisely: the modem, urban-American mind: Vito Corleone was a man with vision. All the great cities of American were being tom by underworld strife, Guerilla wars by the dozen flared ....Don Corleone saw that the newspapers The gangster is the man of the city, with the city's and government agencies were using these killings to get 90 language and knowledge, with its queer and dishonest stricter and strciter laws, to use harsher police methods.... He decided to bring peace to all the warring factions in New York skills and its terrible daring, carrying his life in his hands City and then in the nation. like a placard, like a club. For everyone else, there is at least the theoretical possibility of another world··· in "The Godfather" begins in the court of the wise that happier American culture which the gangster denies, governor, where the Don is dispensing the traditional the city does not really exist; it is only a more crowded Sicilian wedding day favors to his guests. Power attained and more brightly lit country-·· but for the gangster and wisely exercised is at the center of the film: there is only the city; he must inhabit it in order to unlike the novel, the film never even touches on the story personify it: not the real city, but that dangerous and of the rise of the Corle one Family. Consulting the novel, sad city of the imagination which is so much more however, one may see that the rise of Vito Corleone was important, which is the modern world. And the ganster not only different from that of such a traditional gangster as Al Capone, but that it is to the differences https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/yrlsa/vol3/iss1/7 4 Rosen: Cases and Materials on The Outfit

themselves that we must tum in order to perceive the I felt the steam bring the sweat to my skin, and felt the foundations of Don Corleone's real, lasting power: drops begin to slide down my side. The Don held the Capones in small esteem as stupid, obvious cutthroats. His intelligence informed him that Capone had Twisto continued. forfeited all political influence because of his public arrogance and the flaunting of his criminal wealth. The Don knew, in fact was positive, that without political influence, without the "Sometimes it takes something like that to convince camouflage of society, Capone's world, and others like it, somebody he's human, you know what I mean? That he could be easily destroyed. He knew Capone was on the path to shits and sweats like you and me that not only can he destruction. fuck up, but he did fuck up, something important, somewhere, someplace along the line that he can't even Real success, real lasting power, depends upon repres­ remember." sion. It is not a riotous bursting out of anonymity; indeed, its development depends on the capacity to Twisto cleared his throat. Sitting across the room from maintain anonymity. If, in some perversely American me, his legs drawn up on the long stone bench, he was sense, Little Caesar and Scarface may be said to resemble nearly invisible. I tried to puzzle out what he was getting Macbeth, then Michael Corleone might in an equally at. twisted way be compared to Prince Hal in Henry IV: repressing an important part of his natural self, betraying "You know who burned me on those keys of dope? It the human companion of that self (i.e. Kate, who, was Chaney. Chaney again. Smiling all the time, smooth representing the staid virtues of WASP' dom may be pretty boy, fast talker, oozing his way in and out of unsatisfactory as a replacement for Falstaff; but more on other people's hustles, other people's beds, talking his this later} by denying her access to his new, official self. little way into bed with half the freshmen chicks on Michael's assumption of power is accompanied by a lie campus. Remember, after he fucked over Josie we voted that shifts the basis of his personal life. him Face I'd Most Like to Punch? Well, a couple days ago I was talking to Jim Morello. Chaney burned him too, tried to steal his coke connection in New York. I Twisto always liked to use the steam-room for these said to him I'd sure like to mess that pretty-boy's face meetings of his: in the morning, it was almost always up, that if I ever got to know somebody important, sure to be empty, and of someone came in he would be that's one favor I'd ask. Then Jim says to me, 'You spotted immediately. So it was top security. Twisto said, know Vinnie diCarlo, don't you,' and of course I did. So too, that spending time in the steam room kept him in he says, 'Some of the boys he used to work with, when shape. Of course, the real reason was that the steam he was into that kind of thing, they'd take a contract room reminded him or gangster films, corrupt boxing, like you're talking about for a hundred bucks.' " and the whole world of old city gyms. He paused.

That day, I met Twisto in the locker room at 10:30. "If I could only be there, if I could only see that one When we got upstairs and sat down in the clouds of short second of terror on his fucking face, that one last pent-up steam, I was waiting for Twisto to begin moment before he gets hit, when finally, for the first discussing the problem of selling to two keys of lousy time, he knows that he's gonna look different come marijuana that he'd somehow been conned into buying. morning, and that there ain't no way he can weasel out of it."

But Twisto began far a field. Twisto forced a hollow laugh.

"You know Frankie Costello?" he asked; 'I mean, you I asked ifhe really meant to go through with taking out read about him, right?" the contract. 91 "Yeah." "I don't know," he said, softly, uneasily. "You play with something in your mind for so long and feel so comfortable with it, then suddenly it's gonna happen on "You remember how it was he retired ... Vincente the street, outside your brain, it makes you feel dizzy. I Gigante, ex-boxer, ''The Chin" they called him, he wish I could tell you," he said, "but I just don't know." comes right up to Frank and he says, 'This is for you Frankie! Just like that, and with Frank sitting on top of Tom Hagen to Jack Woltz, in The Godfather: the world practically, and walking there in the lobby of " ... l don't think you've understood how important this very his apartment up on Central Park West, which is where small favor is to my client. Mr. Corleone held the infant he's King." Johnny in his arms when he was baptized. When Johnny's father died, Mr Corleone assumed the duties of parenthood, indeed he is called 'Godfather' by many, many people who wish to show their respect and gratitude for the help he has given them. Mr. Corleone never lets his friends down."

Published by Yale Law School Legal Scholarship Repository, 1973 5 Yale Review of Law and Social Action, Vol. 3 [1973], Iss. 1, Art. 7

Nick Pileggi, "The Making of 'The Godfather'" "Congressman, prepare to Six weeks before the the Mott Street scene, Albert Ruddy, the film's producer, was uncertain whether he would be able.to eat crow when you subpoena make the movie at all .... Ruddy had already run into trduble trying to negotiate with house-holders in Manhasset, N.Y., for Frank Sinatra." a site that looked like a godfather's compound. The entire community and its bureaucrats had sabotaged his efforts. Finally, Ruddy went in search Of a godfather of his own.... about you. I mean, a man who doesn't use his influence The moment he reached that agreement with Colombo, to help his friends and family, what kind of a man can Ruddy's troubles were over. Suddenly, the threats of union woes evaporated. Protest letters from Italian-American groups he be? For friendship, as Don Corleone tells Johnny stopped; planned demonstrations and boycotts were called off. Fontane, "is everything. Friendship is more than talent. A location for the godfather's compound was found on Staten It is more than government. It is almost the equal of Island, and Colombo's men made a house-to-house tour of the family. Never forget that." neighborhood, smoothing ruffled feathers. When the filming actually began, Ruddy found that with Colombo's men around, instead of being harassed by And of course, no one in government really does forget neighborhood toughs, shaken down by various unions that; we all know that their creaky platitudes are greased and visited by corrupt cops, The Godfather troupe was with rake offs and personal favors: they, too, are human, untouchable. though they are to be held somewhat in contempt for the small-time, unimaginative form that their hypocrisy must take. When the filming actually began, Ruddy found that with Colombo's men around, instead of being harassed by Warshow points out that the exact content of the neighborhood toughs, shaken down by various unions gangster's business is irrelevant; to the viewer his activity and visited by corrupt cops, The Godfather troupe was is defined by the violence he uses to attain his position. untouchable. Similarly, the exact nature of the Godfather's rackets are irrelevant (we learn of his specific business dealings only to the extent that we know he is opposed to supple­ "The Mafia is Not an Equal Opportunity Employer," menting them with narcotics dealing); what is important declares the title of Nicholas Gage's fine collection of are the values that not only define the Don's style, but articles on the Mafia. True enough. True also that equal which also provide the strength of his organization. opportunity is not the only principle of constitutional These values are the simple, powerful ones that run thick rule that's put on ice (or cased in cement) in the in all human blood: friendship, family, and the powerful administration of what many journalists have enjoyed loyalties based on these; a fundamental sense of personal referring to as America's '·other government." Indeed, it and family honor, and the determination to revenge all is perhaps just these anti-liberal principals that begin to insults to that honor; and the intelligence and patience explain how the Don has staked out his powerful Empire to maintain these values without turning them into a in the American imagination. suicidal bandwagon. That power corrupts is what we take as a given in this world; what we see in the Because, despite devotion to the death to Democracy, "Godfather" is a corruption that is nonetheless a vision despite every American's vision of his country as the of strength and dignity. sacred Cradle of Democracy, the ideal practice of modem liberal government is something that no one, in The subterranean nature of the Don's mythic Empire his deepest self, can believe in. And this, perhaps, is adds another dimension to its attractiveness. Nothing is because its virtues lie not in what it is, but in the quite what it seems to be; respect for the unknown in nightmare visions of what it is not: visions that no any situation must be maintained. The Corleone Family matter how real and recent, evaporate quickly in the exists as a chastisement of anyone foolish enough to be banal daylight of a thousand standardized tests and intoxicated with the latest arrogant wisdoms, anyone 92 bureaucratic forms. foolish enough to believe that one is safe cultivating only the obvious newspaper headline contacts. And so Jack Nothing, really, is sillier than the idea that power is Woltz, Emperor in his own kindom, awakes to find the something to be amassed, via exhibitions of pure severed head of his favorite horse in his bed: competence, simply for the sake of exhibiting honesty, Woltz was not a stupid man, he was merely a supremely more and better competence, and a serene view of all egotistical one. He had mistaken the power he wielded in his world to be more potent than the power of Don Corleone. He petitioners as numbered collections of paper virtues and had merely needed some proof that this was not true. He qualifications. Why get power, we ask, if not to park understood this message. That despite all his wealth, despite all your car fearlessly in No Parking Zones, or to see that his contacts with the President of the United States, despite all craven look of apologetic recognition cross the face of his claims of friendship with the director of the FBI, an obscure importer of Italian olive oil would have him killed. some rookie who's pulled you over on a speeding Would actually have him killed! charge? Confess, a little honesty, admit it. Because if you don't you're obviously lying, and if you're not lying, then there's something really queer and weird https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/yrlsa/vol3/iss1/7 6 Rosen: Cases and Materials on The Outfit

We love it, watching the humiliation of the powers that an organization whose anonymous power, to a large run our daily lives. Careful, Senator, there are those who extent, is based on its capacity to mirror the corporate in certain spheres are more important than you. Keep structure off which it feeds. Nicholas Gage describes this within your limits. Movie moguls, contain your new corporate image of organized crime: arrogance when it comes to Johnny Fontane, the Don's To represent the syndicate in the sophisticated businesses it obnoxious Godson. And Congressman, prepare to eat was financing, Lansky began recruiting bright young men with crow when you subpoena Frank Sinatra. no links to the underworld. He trains them in the art of being invisible, which he has perfected. These men will be the inheritors of power in organized crime, making the job of law The New York Times, Sunday, July 23. enforecement officials in the future even more difficult than it Frank Sinatra played to a packed house last week, belting out is now. "At least the old bunch had records and we knew an angry tune that left a Capital Hill Committee as limp as the them," says one police official. ' It will take us years just to bobby soxers he used to wow. identify this new button-down breed. And some we'll probably never know." "The voice" justified his early nickname by spending much of his 95 minutes of testimony bellowing denials at the House Michael Corleone, first of the button-down breed. It is Select Committee on Crime that he had ever been a front man his emergence as the new and even more powerful Don for the Mafia. At times it was hard to tell whether he was the that is the drama of "the Godfather." And it is a drama witness or the investigator. in which, as we have noted, the rise to power is not paid Swarms of eager visitors, including many young women not for by loneliness and death, as was the case with Little yet born when Mr. Sinatra was inspiring screaming riots as the Caesar; in fact, Michael's rise to power is synonymous Paramount in the l 940's, jammed the carernous House Caucus with his discovery of his place within his family and his Room. Hundreds more waited outside, and there were squeals tradition. And though we have compared Michael's of delight as he passed through the throng. ascent to power with that of Prince Hal, we should also It didn't seem to matter that Mr. Sinatra is overweight, 56, note a fundamental difference: Hal must sacrifice the retired and shows glimmerings of scalp at the back of his head. life of instict in order to rule; Michael, on the other The audience was with him all the way, laughing and clapping hand, must only admit to himself the impossibility of at his belligerent attacks on the committee .... communicating the harsh realities of a man's world to 'I resent it. I won't have it. I'm not a second class citizen," the his wife; what he sacrifices, in the film, is his reluctance singer declared, waggling a finger at the committee .... to kill. Having done that, he may join the colorful world of the capo Clemenza as he prepares to kill, to "make his By the end of the hearing, committee members surrendered to a kind of love-in. Representative Charles Rangel of New York, bones." referring to a title bestowed on Mr. Sinatra by a disc jockey, ringinly told the witness, "You're still chairman of the board." The discovery of personal identity in a junction of power and tradition is the possibility embodied in the Unfortunately, however, so much of this is sleight of rise of Michael Corleone. If only the reluctance to kill is hand-or mind (the coach disappears at midnight: or sacrificed. Unlike the classic gangster hero, Michael pays maybe not until l, depending on when the last feature a minimum price for success. starts in your neighborhood theater). Because Don Corleone and his relm exist as a fantastic mixture of We may recall at this point the modern dilemma that elements that just don't blend, except in a novel or a Warshow saw at the heart of gangster-films: " ... that film. Vast, hidden power, power infused with blood­ failure is a kind of death and success is evil and values and wielded by a ruler wise enough to hand-tailor dangerous-is, ultimately, impossible." This dilemma he justice to each particular situation; power-games in saw resolved at the end of the film by the gangster's which the player puts up his life as stakes in the quest of death: "The dilemma is resolved because it is his death, victory and gain: drama on a scale large enough to be not ours. We are safe; for the moment we can acquiesce epic, and yet small enough to be grapsed as something in our failure, we can choose to fail." Unlike this classic resembling our lives, or at least the lives we would like to gangster, however, the natural son of the Godfather pays lead. a minimal price for his success. Success is possible if only we pay that small price. The subversive drama has 93 carried us through bullets and gore only to mirror the But the realm of such drama is a dream, its vintage society's dream. Perhaps this is one reason why the details lifted from the 1940s, and welded together with Godfather and his son stand so close to the center of the emotional imperatives of Nixon's '70s. We yearn for America's fantasy life in the Age of Nixon. the human level in public drama, for the personalization and humiliation of all that is invisible, banal and idiotic in the colossus that runs our lives; yet surely we've been suckered somewhere if our frustration must culminate in a vision of Marlon Brando as the Godfather. Because we all really know that power today not only corrupts, but also makes dull and colorless. Inside the Mafia as well as in our government. The fruit of the organizational genius of men like Vito and Michael Corleone and (in real Mafia Life) Meyer Lansky is always Published by Yale Law School Legal Scholarship Repository, 1973 7